The present invention broadly relates to the field of content co-browsing and more particularly relates to the field of two-way form management over a computer communications network.
Content distribution refers to the distribution of content over a computer communications network. The advent of the World Wide Web resulted in the explosive growth of content distribution over the global Internet to the extent that the electronic distribution of content now far outnumbers the print distribution of content. The most general circumstance of content distribution is the venerable Web page transmitted to a requesting client from a source server over the Internet for rendering and viewing by an end user in a Web browser. For many, the only form of content distribution experienced with significant frequency is the “surfing” of traditional Web pages.
Notwithstanding, the Internet and particularly the World Wide Web provide for an ideal environment for collaborative computing. To facilitate collaborative computing, co-browsing technologies have experienced considerable growth as a reliable tool permitting multiple different users to cooperatively view content distributed about the World Wide Web. Co-browsing tools permit remotely disposed users to direct the retrieval and display of content simultaneously in respective content browsers in a coordinated fashion such that one end user directs the retrieval of the content for viewing by all participating users.
In as much as the conventional operating system and Web browser inhibit co-browsing largely for reasons of security. To achieve the effect of co-browsing, end users when compelled can rely upon screen sharing and application sharing technologies in remote presentation tools and remote access tools. Notwithstanding, advanced features of co-browsing tools generally are absent in remote presentation tools and remote access tools, such as coordinated playback of streaming media objects and frame and portlet support.
Two-way forms represent a naturally outgrowth of co-browsing and provide a substantial mechanism for the customer relationship management industry. Two-way forms essentially are forms based content renderable in two different content browsers for two, geographically remote end users such that the user input provided in one field of the two-way form can be visible in the same field of the same two-way form rendered in a separate content browser by a collaborating end user. Two-way forms have been implemented in the past using the open source “dojo” toolkit including commercially available implementations such as the communications enabled application (CEA) dojo toolkit manufactured by International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., United States of America.